Wide-eyed Michigan tourists Bob Carmichael (Kip Niven) and his wife (Julia Duffy) are tired and desperate late at night for a hotel room in San Diego but don't want to look around.
She is recovering from a nervous breakdown. They take room 3502 in the first hotel they find - the very last room the hotel has to let. Bob awakens to find his wife left sometime before dawn. The front desk clerk says she left the hotel at four AM without saying where she is going.
Bob doesn't want to wait 24 hours and hires local private investigators the Simon Brothers - Rick (Gerald McCraney) and A.J. (Jameson Parker) to find her.
The hotel maid who was assigned to the room says it is haunted. The previous guests who stayed in the room believe that too. A woman named Rosalind Martin committed suicide in the room years earlier. No guest experience has been positive since.
The wife acts strangely and buys a gun. Then she inadvertently leads the detectives towards an even older mystery which has nothing to with her. They follow up even after they have already been paid by their clients - the Carmichaels. There is no obvious incentive beyond curiosity about a matter they have already concluded is highly dangerous.
The fact that this is a classic episode illustrates us what audiences for this show were continually asked to do : i.e. overlook the transgressions of the heroes because of a utilitarian ideal and because we like the heroes and because we have seen them do things to help people who probably deserve it.
We see a couple of private investigators here break with professional protocol and even after having been in a firefight with a hit-man have not involved the local cops. That is in order to protect their client from possible criminal prosecution.
In real life, that would be both unethical and illegal as to be untenable even to contemplate. But our heroes are the good guys and it matters to them if a client is a good person. We in the audience go along with that because we like them. Not because it is proper.
Not only are they criminally negligent, they do another of what Rick calls their "Black Bag" ops i.e. a break & enter recon. We see them do stuff like that many times in the series. This is put on offer for us to accept or reject. Real fans accept it because of what it delivered.
The show was never meant to be an instructional about private investigation. The emphasis was on brotherhood as it is known in life. A shared transgression is a bond of siblings and a kind of right of passage. They presented it here in the Simon boys crossing lines of legality to play in with the detective show milieu. But it really does represent an "I won't tell Mom, if you don't." moment.
The only real issue I had with this episode was its only partial commitment to a ghost/possession story in the first half which Julia Duffy draws us into. The ending which features Dr.Joyce Brothers is an insipid cop out.
She is recovering from a nervous breakdown. They take room 3502 in the first hotel they find - the very last room the hotel has to let. Bob awakens to find his wife left sometime before dawn. The front desk clerk says she left the hotel at four AM without saying where she is going.
Bob doesn't want to wait 24 hours and hires local private investigators the Simon Brothers - Rick (Gerald McCraney) and A.J. (Jameson Parker) to find her.
The hotel maid who was assigned to the room says it is haunted. The previous guests who stayed in the room believe that too. A woman named Rosalind Martin committed suicide in the room years earlier. No guest experience has been positive since.
The wife acts strangely and buys a gun. Then she inadvertently leads the detectives towards an even older mystery which has nothing to with her. They follow up even after they have already been paid by their clients - the Carmichaels. There is no obvious incentive beyond curiosity about a matter they have already concluded is highly dangerous.
The fact that this is a classic episode illustrates us what audiences for this show were continually asked to do : i.e. overlook the transgressions of the heroes because of a utilitarian ideal and because we like the heroes and because we have seen them do things to help people who probably deserve it.
We see a couple of private investigators here break with professional protocol and even after having been in a firefight with a hit-man have not involved the local cops. That is in order to protect their client from possible criminal prosecution.
In real life, that would be both unethical and illegal as to be untenable even to contemplate. But our heroes are the good guys and it matters to them if a client is a good person. We in the audience go along with that because we like them. Not because it is proper.
Not only are they criminally negligent, they do another of what Rick calls their "Black Bag" ops i.e. a break & enter recon. We see them do stuff like that many times in the series. This is put on offer for us to accept or reject. Real fans accept it because of what it delivered.
The show was never meant to be an instructional about private investigation. The emphasis was on brotherhood as it is known in life. A shared transgression is a bond of siblings and a kind of right of passage. They presented it here in the Simon boys crossing lines of legality to play in with the detective show milieu. But it really does represent an "I won't tell Mom, if you don't." moment.
The only real issue I had with this episode was its only partial commitment to a ghost/possession story in the first half which Julia Duffy draws us into. The ending which features Dr.Joyce Brothers is an insipid cop out.